Flashback: When Staten Island farms fed Manhattan

Agriculture played a significant and valuable part in Staten Island’s financial growth, from Native Americans who farmed the land, to the expansion of the Island farms by the Huguenots and the English.Farm life was a never-ending struggle with nature, taming the landscape to make fields into farms by cutting forests and clearing and draining the swamps to create a pasture for domesticated animals. Horses were popular and used for the plowing and carrier of produce. Many farms included fruit orchards of various types such as apples, pears, peaches, and figs. Manhattan was the principal market for the 18th and 19th-century farmers of Richmond County, according to Staten Island Advance archives. (Compiled by Jan Somma-Hammel)

[@josephsullivan1760]

I remember when i was a kid in the early 60s my aunt had a home on Bloomingdale Road in Pleasent planes.
There was a farm there that was owned by Mount Loretta home for boys.
It was huge with cows goats chickens and sheep.
When we would visit my uncle would take us to the farm and it was like being upstate NY with which seamed like hundreds of acres of vegitables being grown and you could see so far without any houses anywhere.
There was also a bar across from the farm called Rhienharts.
Even when i was 14 years old i used to go pheasent and rabbit hunting there and even though it was part of NYC the NYPD never even said a word .
It was a sad time when they bought up every inch of land and threw houses one on top of the other.
That all happened as soon as the Verrazono Bridge was built.

[@Lolabelle59]

Would have been much happier to live on Staten Island in those days.

[@nickpatterson492]

Wow I can't even imagine staten island that way

[@IndianaTones]

Awesome

[@Janotes]

These photos look like they may have come out the NYPL site..

[@patfaitz5543]

Rode horses all over that island and slid them down the hill at todt hill.

[@donaldkane1714]

What annoying music!